American Documentary

Overview

New York, N.Y. —September 14, 2023— POV Shorts and Chicken & Egg Pictures announced today the five recipients of the inaugural Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund, which granted $120,000 for development and production funding to three short documentary projects helmed by women and nonbinary filmmakers. The initiative marks the two organizations' first joint content development project, and all films are co-productions of POV Shorts and Chicken & Egg Pictures. In partnership with Points North, the institute will welcome the grantees as an official fellowship cohort at the 2023 Camden International Film Festival (CIFF2023).

Chicken & Egg Pictures and POV Shorts each contributed $60,000 to finance the fund which awarded three non-recoupable $40,000 grants to new nonfiction short-form works in progress or already in production. The selected films will be produced and funded in compliance with PBS Funding Standards and Producing Guidelines.

In addition to financial support, each project will receive creative, strategic, and editorial advice from the Chicken & Egg Pictures and POV Shorts teams. While attending CIFF2023, each filmmaker will receive an All Access Filmmaker Badge including Party Access, Lodging, access to the Points North “Artists Programs Lunch,” and participate in a “Production Summit” on making films for PBS distribution.

The completed shorts will be considered for launch on PBS via national linear broadcast and PBS Digital, which reaches an audience of 44.7 million people monthly.

The working committee responsible for planning and managing the Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund are Kiyoko McCrae (Program Director) and Iva Dimitrova (Program Manager) for Chicken & Egg Pictures, and Opal H. Bennett (Senior Producer / Executive Producer) and Kerry LeVielle (Associate Producer) for American Documentary I POV Shorts. Recipients were selected via a dual panel review following a call for nominations from a broad grouping of film festivals and curators.

“There are more distribution opportunities for short-form documentaries than ever before,” said Opal H. Bennett. “Yet a challenge many filmmakers experience is a lack of funds to get their projects started. The ‘Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund’ began as creative collaborations often do – over a meal at a film festival. Chicken & Egg Pictures wanted to expand their short form catalog, and POV wanted to lend support to shorts filmmakers earlier in the production cycle. It’s extremely gratifying that a chat over dinner could lead to the creation of such a needed initiative. We’re also so excited for the burgeoning partnership with Points North who have shown a real commitment to supporting short form work. Hopefully we’ll be back at Camden Fest before too long to share the completed works.”

“Shorts play a vital role in highlighting timely stories and cultural perspectives,” said Chicken & Egg Pictures Program Director Kiyoko McCrae. “These shorts share bold visions, innovative artistry, and a deep care and connection to the communities and individuals featured in these stories. We’re proud to partner with POV to support these incredibly talented filmmakers in bringing these rich and nuanced stories to audiences. We are delighted to bring the filmmakers together and celebrate this partnership in-person at the 2023 Camden International Film Festival. Points North’s commitment to supporting filmmakers and building community makes CIFF the perfect opportunity to kick-off this initiative.”

Erika Dilday, Executive Director, American Documentary and Executive Producer, POV, POV Shorts and America ReFramed, said, “American Documentary and POV are honored to have partnered with Chicken & Egg Pictures to establish the ‘Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund. Good documentaries teach us tolisten and really hear the stories of others without getting defensive and attempting to discredit. The selected projects amplify and nurture the filmmakers' authentic voices and POV Shorts is proud to add their stories to our canon of acclaimed films.”

Jenni Wolfson, Chief Executive Officer of Chicken & Egg Pictures, said, "Chicken & Egg Pictures is excited to partner with American Documentary and POV Shorts. Both the organization and its series have long been committed to bringing diverse filmmaker perspectives to public media. We are thrilled that this collaboration will provide more opportunities for women and non-binary filmmakers to reach broader audiences across the US using PBS platforms.”

Chicken & Egg Pictures | POV Shorts Co-Production Fund Grantees

En Travesti

Directors: Brit Fryer, Lydia Cornett

Synopsis: En Travesti explores the entangled relationship between voice, gender, and opera through those who contend with these connections daily––a trans opera singer switching voice types, a musicologist delving into the legacy of Castrati singers, a cisgender vocalist challenging conventional voice categorizations, and an otolaryngologist specializing in vocal procedures for performers. From the history of trouser roles to breakthroughs in vocal feminization surgery, the film weaves together a tapestry of present-day stories while recognizing a long history of gender nonconformity in an art form bound by the binary.

Brit Fryer (he/him) is an award-winning queer and trans filmmaker based in Brooklyn. He is grateful to have shown at CPH: DOX, Indie Grits, NewFest, Outfest, Inside Out, MIX NYC, BlackStar Film Festival, and more. Brit and his work have been supported by the Sundance Ignite Fellowship, Creative Culture, Chicken and Egg, GLAAD's Equity in Media and Entertainment Initiative, and HBO / Gotham's Documentary Development Initiative. He is currently in development of his first feature film.

Lydia Cornett (she/her) is a Baltimore-born filmmaker currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She has received support from the Tribeca Film Institute, IF/Then Shorts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Her films have screened at Sheffield DocFest, AFI Fest, Slamdance, BAMCinemaFest, Aspen Shortsfest, Palm Springs International ShortsFest, Hamptons International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and DOC NYC. Her work has been distributed and featured by The New Yorker, PBS (POV and Reel South), Nowness, and Vimeo Staff Picks. Lydia is the co-founder of Cineseries, a graduate-student-led screening series at the Wexner Center for the Arts.

Hold Me Close

Directors: Aurora Brachman, LaTajh Weaver

Synopsis: As winter gives way to spring, and spring to summer, two Queer Black women in love experience rituals of care, joy, and unavoidable pain, and a season of life together.

Aurora Brachman (she/her) is an award-winning documentary director and producer. Through patient and poetic storytelling her films explore narratives of intimate relationships within families and communities. Her short documentaries including Club Quarantine, Joychild, Still Waters, and The Gallery That Destroys All Shame, have been acquired by The New York Times, The New Yorker, and POV; shortlisted for an IDA Award; exhibited by MoMA; selected for Vimeo Staff Picks; and screened at numerous festivals including Sundance, True/False, Hot Docs, AFI Docs, DOC NYC, BlackStar Film Festival, and SFFILM. Aurora is a 2020 Sundance Ignite Fellow, a 2022 San Francisco International Film Festival Film House Resident, and a Fulbright Scholar in filmmaking. She associate produced the A24 documentary Underrated, co-produced Apple TV+’s upcoming Girls State, and assisted on the critically-acclaimed Showtime docuseries Couples Therapy. Aurora primarily makes work about the experiences of Black, brown, and Queer people and is committed to collaborative and ethical storytelling.

LaTajh Weaver (she/they) is an Oakland based screenwriter and director. They are dedicated to reclaiming and telling overlooked stories of Black and Queer dynamics and engaging ways these communities learn to cope with everyday injustices. Weaver’s project, Cycles, which follows a youth advocate worker and a young gang member as they search for their purpose amid danger in Oakland, was selected to screen at over fifteen film festivals and was awarded Best Screenplay at the Liberated Lens Film Festival. In 2018, Weaver was awarded a National Queer Arts grant for their screenplay, Pipeline, a satirical drama about the school to prison pipeline. Weaver associate produced A24’s Earth Mama, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Currently they’re in residence at the San Francisco International Film Festival FilmHouse for their feature length film, Queerling, a dark comedy challenging identity politics amongst the ever gentrifying Bay Area.

The Roost (working title)

Director: Imani Dennison

Synopsis: The Roost (working title) is an experimental documentary exploring the rich history of a roller skate community in Louisville, KY. Through an intimate video lens, we delve into key community members' personal recollections of the sport and its role in navigating life amidst the challenges of a gun-violence-affected city.

Imani Dennison (she/they) is a multidisciplinary lens-based artist and curator from Louisville, Kentucky, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Dennison is the founder, head curator and programmer of Black Science Fiction, a Black-led creative experiment dedicated to the preservation of Black imagination. Dennison co-directed For Our Girls, and their most recent work Bone Black: Midwives vs the South is a short experimental documentary produced during the 2022 Tribeca Queen Collective Directing Program set to premiere in 2023. Dennison is currently developing a hybrid documentary Black Rage, their first feature-length film.

About

About POV Shorts

POV Shorts launched in 2018 as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries.The series is known for its curation, and for broadcasting award-winning titles, including: Emmy® nominated Earthrise, Water Warriors, The Changing Same, Emmy® winner The Love Bugs and the Oscar® shortlisted A Broken House and Aguilas. It won Best Short Form Series at the IDA Documentary Awards in 2022 and 2020.

About Chicken & Egg Pictures

Chicken & Egg Pictures provides a global community of women and non-binary documentary filmmakers with creative and financial support to realize their cinematic visions and build fulfilling careers in a gender inclusive media industry. Recently supported films include Oscar-nominated Writing With Fire and Ascension, Emmy-nominated One Child Nation, Sundance World Cinema Grand Jury Prize-winning The Eternal Memory, and Oscar-winning American Factory. Since its inception, Chicken & Egg Pictures has awarded over $10 million in grants and thousands of hours of creative mentorship to more than 450 filmmakers. For additional information please visit our website at http://chickeneggpics.org/.

About POV

Produced by American Documentary, POV is the longest-running independent documentary showcase on American television. Since 1988, POV has presented films on PBS that capture the full spectrum of the human experience, with a long commitment to centering women and people of color in front of, and behind, the camera. The series is known for introducing generations of viewers to groundbreaking works like Tongues Untied, American Promise, Minding The Gap and Not Going Quietly, and innovative filmmakers including Jonathan Demme, Laura Poitras and Nanfu Wang. In 2018, POV Shorts launched as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries. All POV programs are available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS App, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.

POV goes “beyond the broadcast” to bring powerful nonfiction storytelling to viewers wherever they are. Free educational resources accompany every film and a community network of thousands of partners nationwide work with POV to spark dialogue around today’s most pressing issues. POV continues to explore the future of documentary through innovative productions with partners such as The New York Times and The National Film Board of Canada and on platforms including Snapchat and Instagram.

POV films and projects have won 46 Emmy Awards, 27 George Foster Peabody Awards, 15 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards® and the first-ever George Polk Documentary Film Award. Learn more at pbs.org/pov and follow @povdocs on social media.

About American Documentary, Inc.

American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia company dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.

Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, the Open Society Foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Park Foundation, and Perspective Fund. Additional funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the Chasing the Dream and Peril and Promise public media initiatives of The WNET Group, Chris and Nancy Plaut, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.

About PBS

PBS, with more than 330 member stations, offers all Americans the opportunity to explore new ideas and new worlds through television and digital content. Each month, PBS reaches over 120 million people through television and 26 million people online, inviting them to experience the worlds of science, history, nature and public affairs; to hear diverse viewpoints; and to take front row seats to world-class drama and performances. PBS’s broad array of programs has been consistently honored by the industry’s most coveted award competitions. Teachers of children from pre-K through 12th grade turn to PBS for digital content and services that help bring classroom lessons to life. Decades of research confirm that PBS’s premier children’s media service, PBS KIDS, helps children build critical literacy, math and social-emotional skills, enabling them to find success in school and life. Delivered through member stations, PBS KIDS offers high-quality educational content on TV – including a 24/7 channel, online at pbskids.org, via an array of mobile apps and in communities across America. More information about PBS is available at www.pbs.org, one of the leading dot-org websites on the internet, or by following PBS on Twitter, Facebook or through our apps for mobile and connected devices. Specific program information and updates for press are available at pbs.org/pressroom or by following PBS Communications on Twitter.